Program helps rebuild caribou herds
Cows and calves kept and protected until old enough to survive in the wild on their own
Just a few years ago, a caribou calf born in the Klinse-Za her din northern B.C. had one chance in 10 of surviving her first month.
About half are killed and eaten by wolves, a scene that is playing out for caribou across the province, said Scott McNay, a wildlife biologist.
For the past four years, McNay has worked with the West Moberly and Saulteau First Nations, which are taking radical action to reverse the decline of the caribou by protecting cows and calves in “maternity pens” until the newborns are ready to survive life in the wild.
“A few calves are taken by bears and wolverines, but we see that as a natural phenomenon,” he said. “The pressure wolves are putting on the caribou at high elevations in the past decade is not a historically natural situation.”
Caribou are paying a steep price. Only five of B.C.’s 65 herds are listed as stable or increasing. Five herds have simply perished in recent years and another 45 are known to be in decline.
But the Klinse-Za maternity program has had impressive results.
They captured 44 cows over the past four years and released 32 calves, of which 23 were still alive one year later. Because the herd is so small, some of the cows are recaptured year after year.
The Klinse-Za herd has grown from 36 to 67 members, but capturing the females is a dramatic intervention, taken as an “emergency measure” to rebuild the herd.
The caribou are tracked by helicopters then net guns immobilize the cows. The animals are blindfolded and sedated, then moved on trailers to the maternity pen.
“We take a lot of samples to assess
their health and then reverse the drug,” said McNay. “It’s a big operation, with four helicopters and about 25 people involved, but it’s showing all signs of being a successful program.”
The penning program is being pursued by the Moberly and Saulteau simultaneously with wolf population control and habitat restoration.
“You have to do everything at
once; you can’t just do one thing and expect it to work,” he said. “The range of these animals is 60 to 70 per cent disturbed (by humans), but the First Nations’ goal is to conserve enough of that range that they will be self-sustaining.”
Pressure on caribou is “human-assisted,” as paths, motorized sport trails, and roads for logging and oil and gas exploration reach further
into their habitat.
The Moberly made an internal decision decades ago to stop hunting the caribou when elders noticed numbers starting to decline with industrial development in the area, said Chief Roland Wilson.
“The logging, gas and mining companies are happy to make their billions while they are here, but not so ready to fix the problems they
leave behind.”
The recovery program in Revelstoke has also taken a multipronged approach, protecting oldgrowth forest from logging, restricting snowmobile access and reducing moose population to historic normal levels, which has the effect of shrinking the local wolf population.